article imageMicrosoft rolls out Bing Travel

By Brenton Currie.
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Jun 5, 2009 by  Brenton Currie - 4 votes, no comments
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Earlier this week Microsoft began rolling out its new 'decision engine' to the public and today it added Bing Travel to the site which allows you to compare prices on things such as airfares and hotel bookings.
The new feature, which is currently only available on the US version of Bing, asks you to enter when you would like to fly, before giving you a results page of the best prices and its suggestion as to wether or not you should book your flights yet.
“Bing Travel has a simple goal: help people make smarter, more informed decisions regarding travel,”
said Hugh Crean, general manager of Bing Travel.
As customizable as its sister site Bing search, Travel allows you to select what flights to display by airlines, prices, times for landing and takeoff, quality and duration of the flight.
But perhaps the handiest feature is the 7-day price predictor box, which features prominently in the top left hand corner. It gives you, based upon previous fare history, a tip on whether you should buy your ticket now or wait, and even tells you how confident it is in its decision as well as by how much it thinks fares will rise.
The new feature also works for hotels as well, although this notably functions in the US only.
Most of this new site has origins from Microsoft's takeover of Farecast last year, which before this hadn't really been implemented in many Microsoft technologies.
The addition of the Travel site to Bing is bound to bring more good publicity for Microsoft, with many people saying that finally Microsoft have got it (search) right.
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